This is an image of the McLaury Building on the campus of South Dakota
Mines built inside the video game Minecraft.
South Dakota
Mines computer engineering major Jaxxen Cheney has built a model of the
university campus inside the popular video game Minecraft.
The game allows users to create worlds inside the
platform with sets of digital building blocks. A video of the rendering is here, and an album of photos showing the South Dakota Mines campus in Minecraft
can be found here.
“I’ve been playing Minecraft since I was a kid,”
says Cheney. “It’s not a difficult game to play and it’s very accessible. I
like that you can play it with many other people.”
The Minecraft version of the Mines campus includes
both inside and outside of buildings to scale. Cheney used Google Earth to help
build the model and completed much of the university campus after graduating
high school. He says he undertook this effort to help familiarize himself with
the school he planned to attend.
“I didn’t know the campus very well before I became
a student. When I first arrived, I got lost all the time,” he says. “Once you
get yourself familiar with campus, it’s easy to navigate. I think this could be
a great tool for incoming freshmen to explore the campus before they come to
school.”
Cheney has opened the door for collaboration with
other students who are adding their own details, including decorating insides
of student housing common areas and filling in the insides of buildings such as
university’s Museum of Geology. Some university alumni are even building a
virtual renditions of their own freshman dorms inside the platform. Cheney also
used the campus he built in Minecraft as a project in one of his humanities
classes.
“Campus is constantly changing and so this will
always be open for users to update and collaborate on the build,” says Cheney.
“People can customize their own dorm or update changes in a building they may
frequent. I also love it when people correct my mistakes and make improvements,”
he adds.
Minecraft reports 93 million users worldwide. Cheney’s
effort follows other university students around the country who have replicated
their own campuses in the platform including MIT, Boston University, UC Berkeley
and many others.
Cheney invites Minecraft users to join this Discord chat site to learn more about the effort and to
take part in the ongoing build of campus. This document also describes how to access the campus inside different versions of the game. Instructions on how to enter the
Minecraft version of the Mines campus can be found in the description of this YouTube video Cheney posted
to his channel. Those already familiar with Minecraft and can access the
platform on a PC or mobile device via the server address 51.68.204.36:25610. 